Should I get the Surface 2 or wait for Surface RT to lower the price further?

[Tree]

Hey Surface peeps!

As per topic title, should I buy the Surface 2 when it comes out in October or wait for the RT to plummet the price even further?

Background info: I'm a university student in Australia who's gonna graduate mid 2014. The Surface seems to be a perfect solution for school work being extremely light (my laptop is 2.5kg or 5.5lbs :crazy which is great for travel and having MS programs such as Office and a functional keyboard add-on for great productivity. I've already got a decent desktop I recently put together so the Surface is intended to be a replacement for my laptop (ex-desktop) which is heavy, short battery life, no bluetooth and excruciatingly slow even after a clean format. (Acer Aspire 5741). After uni it will still be highly functional as a laptop replacement and my first tablet.

As a uni student I get a measly (imo) 10% discount on the Surface RT which retails in Oz for $389 AUD from MS store but discounted to $350 AUD for students.
The Surface 2 is said to retail for a whopping $529 AUD. Hopefully they will offer a student discount too for that lol. Or a special interductory price or Christmas sale...

Now I've read up a fair bit on the specs of the Surface 2 and there seems to be quite an improvement over the RT. CPU, battery, display and lighter/thinner being most important. So is it worth almost $200 over the RT? Seems to be a general consensus that Tegra 3 is slightly weak on RT but I doubt that will hamper Office programs especially with firmware updates. Opening multiple browser tabs is a different story tho...It's not too urgent as I still gotta save up but I'm getting pretty sick of lugging around my primitive 15" machine which takes up desk space. Gets tiring too when I'm running late to class (Monash Clayton is a big campus). I'll definitely need it by Feb 2014 at the very least when school starts again.

So I guess my options are:
1. Wait for the Surface 2. Hopefully price drops to $450 then it's worth $100 over the RT. If not it's still better than RT.
2. Buy Surface RT when price drops to at least $300.

Given I paid $500 (or was it $600?) for my laptop back in 2010-2011 is suppose $529 isn't too much to ask for...

Anyways thanks for reading this far! I have a bad habit of writing too much so please forgive me

 

[demandarin]

Unless you can get a surface RT on an eBay deal, wait. Ms isn't going to lower price any further. Or at least anytime soon.

I got my RT on eBay for only 249 for a 64gb version.

 

[CrippsCorner]

I don't think the price difference is enough to warrant going for the RT. Get the Surface 2! Looks great in silver too.

 

[pallentx]

If the 200GB Skydrive is valuable to you, get the new one for sure. I don't know that the original Surface will drop much more.

 

[souldier]

Yup I highly doubt the RT will go down in price for a long time. Your best bet to get it cheaper is buy used or refurbished. I personally would love the S2 a lot more, but if the first RT meets YOUR personal needs, then go for it and save. In end, it depends on you and what you need, not what we prefer.

 

[WillysJeepMan]

Sound advice has already been given, but I'll add mine...

IF you are able to buy a factory-refurbed RT for 1/2 the price of a new one, then I'd highly recommend that. (I got in on the $199 USD 32GB RT/TouchCover bundle)

If you aren't able to do that, then you need to ask yourself if you will plan on keeping the device for the short-term (and upgrading within a year or two) or long-term. If short-term, get a new RT. less money out-of-pocket... put the cost difference between the RT and S2 in the bank. When you upgrade, you can give the RT away, or sell it at a low price for a quick turnaround and then buy an S3. While you are getting familiar with the RT you'll be in a better position to understand how it fits into your workflow and whether or not it will actually live up to what you hope it will do.

Just some other perspectives to consider.

 

[oion]

Agreed with others that I highly doubt MS will lower the retail price of RT v1 any further. But we will be seeing more RT v1 units either refurb or used on eBay within the next month-plus as the new version comes out (though shipping to Australia may negate gains there, hard to say).

Your use case is perfect for the RT version of Surface; I'm much the same way though I'm not a student anymore (separate desktop, want a true ultraportable "satellite" device for productivity). As for performance, there is a thread where users say they can manipulate Word documents with graphics up to a hundred pages or something, so that should give an idea about productivity threshold for a common student use. Large PDFs, etc. I don't know about the limits of Excel data manipulation since I don't use it as heavily as some other people, but keep in mind that macros and add-ins will not work. RT v1 still gets at least 8 hours worth of battery life, so that works out for student usage.

I actually went ahead and preordered Surface 2 for the higher specs (64GB version, USB3, CPU, 2-kickstand is nice, battery cover for future-proofing as battery capacities die down) and because I usually keep my devices for a minimum of 5 years, so starting higher is better for me--really did not expect MS to release a new version this quickly. I'll need to figure out what to do with my first gen RT by then, and there's a good chance it'll end up on eBay with a bundled Type keyboard.

 

[chatterbot]

The Surface 2 is clearly worth the extra $150. You get 10+ hrs of battery life in video playback, vs 8 hrs on the Surface 1. It is also significantly more powerful and u get a 1080p display. The Surface 2 is pretty much a perfect device except for 1 issue...the lack of compatibility when browsing some popular websites. I could care less about apps. With the power cover you'll probably get like 16 hrs of video playback on Surface 2!

 

[beman39]

so does anyone know an exact date these things start rolling out?

 

[Tree]

Thanks for the replies everyone, much appreciated! From what I gather I shouldn't spend more than $200 on an RT, which to me makes perfect sense. I will keep my eyes peeled for cheap RTs on eBay especially your one oion
I'm also considering adding an Ultrabook to my growing tech ecosystem in some distant future 1~2 years (currently just the desktop lol). The ultrabook would be for music recording and maybe some production. But not sure when I'll start playing gigs regularly and it'll probs be after uni.
It's tempting just to get a Surface 2 and get it over and done with tho hehe. I do like the coloured type keyboard.

beman I believe they roll out on October 22nd?

 

[GreatWindows]

Surface 2 is $449 lil
Sent from my Nokia Lumia 920 using Board Express

 

[beman39]

oohh nice! maybe I might sell mine and get the surface 2.....hmmmm :smile: